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July 5, 2007

One of the Navy's most remarkable ships retrofitted Any number of vessels have made important contributions to the defense of the US. But few have as versatile a record as the aircraft carrier Intrepid. The mighty ship, which was turned into a museum in 1982, was moved recently from dry dock in Bayonne, N.J., where it had undergone exterior renovations, to Staten Island, N.Y., to be fitted with new high-tech exhibits. The fourth Navy vessel to bear that name played a critical role in several Pacific theater engagements in World War II, was later used to recover the Mercury VII and Gemini II space capsules and astronauts after splashdown in the early 1960s, and saw combat again off Vietnam before being decommissioned in 1974. Even in retirement, it was used as an FBI operations center following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some other facts about the Intrepid: